This is a South African Dung Beetle.

The dung beetle, or phanaeus vindex, is between 1/2 and 1 inch long, and typically a metallic green or blue, with a golden bronze head. Noted for its habit of rolling spheres of animal dung into holes in the ground, the dung beetle plays a beneficial role in ecosystems across the world.


Today's dung beetle is a descendent of scarabaeus sacer, the sacred beetles of ancient Egypt. It is represented by an aspect of the sun god Ra known as Khepera, who was believed to push the sun across the sky, much as a dung beetle pushes balls of poop.



This is Anub'Arak.

Although he is the king of an undead race known as Nerubians, and certainly exhibits strength that at least equals that of the many gods of Azeroth, we believe him to be largely unrelated to Khepera, and instead a direct relative of the more earthly dung beetle.  We first realized that we might be dealing with a relative of phanaeus vindex when, upon close, entomological observation, we noticed many similarities between the repeated actions of Anub and the traditional habits of the modern dung beetle.




Translation: He was rolling the shit out of us.





This is Scylae.

Field Marshall, Battlemaster and resident Coach of Dawn, Scylae is a valuable asset when assessing tactics, strategy and the finer tweaks to particularly challenging encounters. His extensive PvP experience has provided him with the necessary skill set to think quickly on his feet and offer out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Plus, he's in 11th grade and most of us are still in middle school, so he knows all kinds of stuff that we don't. We gave him the benefit of the doubt.

On cue, he stepped up to the plate when it became apparent that we would need to lean on his expertise.

Some suggestions were more useful than others.



After we each received individual instructions from Scylae, we were ready.




Although we were not met with immediate success, we were resolute in our belief in the plan provided by our wise and sage-like leader. We continued attempts with a newfound confidence, certain of impending victory.





Of course, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy sense of optimism when there is a giant, undead dung beetle ripping your face off and shoving underground spikes up all of your friends' asses.





Overall, things could have gone better.

Finally, after what seemed like months of horrible, horrible deaths, our guest in the raid, joining us through the Raider Exchange Program that we participate in with <i have slain the rancor>, spoke up.





Indeed.

In our rush to finish up the Trials and get on with teh rape in Icecrown, it would seem that we neglected our due diligence and allowed Scylae's overwhelming amount of nerd points to affect our opinions of his tactical analysis. In retrospect, I'm not even sure that Scylae ever offered a concrete plan. His contributions consisted mainly of repeating "OH YEAHHH" over and over, and breathing heavily into his microphone in a disconcerting, sexually aggressive manner.

After some deliberation, we came to the conclusion that we had been remiss to factor Scylae's suggestions so heavily into our strategy.

After all, this is the same guy that was responsible for assembling the losing roster in this:



And for this:



In our defense, the guy has a pretty impressive Gear Score. How were we supposed to know he was bad?

Although we diagnosed the problem with the source of our strategy, coming up with a prognosis was a bit more challenging. None of us had any idea how to kill a thirty foot tall dung beetle. (This came as somewhat of a surprise, considering that about 80% of this guild is from Texas.) Luckily, several of us had a few semesters at the University of Phoenix Online under our belts, so we had access to a number of bleeding edge research services:




Despite a thorough investigation into the matter, we were unable to find any cheat codes whatsoever regarding Anub'Arak. A bit demoralized, but still unwilling to give up, we decided to take a heretofore unprecedented step and open the discussion to the guild as a whole.




Sinestra's parents continue to regret their decision to not invest in reading flash cards. And, although the guild didn't come to any outstandingly helpful conclusions, Rylai came away inspired.




+



After some careful consideration, he realized what the problem was. We needed a distraction. And not just any distraction, but a distraction that played to Anub'Arak's most primal desire. Which is poop. We needed a player so awful that Anub would mistake it for the feces of a large sub-saharan mammal.

Which leads us, of course, to




It even alliterates.

Yes, we were blessed (if you can call something like this "blessed" [and we usually don't]) to have what is likely the singularly worst player on the realm showing up to our raids. Once we settled that, it was a walk in the park.

The only thing left was to keep him focused on distracting Anub, and not, like, all of the Nerubian Burrowers.



Blah, blah, blah. Tactics Tactics tactics. It died, mother fuckers.



Bonus Material:














See you in Icecrown!




written by my dear e-friend and e-colleague, Kwag.

Wow this is an announcement? You're terrible, this is terrible, everyone is gay, I'm gay

lol@the outer boarder you put on it

Biigfoot wrote:

klymax wrote:

lol@the outer boarder you put on it

It's so we can't see the cooldown on his army of the dead!

Note the hidden action bars.

It's the bottom right button on the entire screencap.  It's darkened because I like to vignette my screenshots, but you can clearly see it.

HOW DO I SHOW ACHIEVEMENTs

Immortal and Insanity updates in 2010 when Popsicles isn't around to raid

10/10

Kwag wrote:

His contributions consisted mainly of repeating "OH YEAHHH" over and over, and breathing heavily into his microphone in a disconcerting, sexually aggressive manner.

favorite part

the scylae whisper is win

hilarious write up

wow this is garfield quality write up!

nice job on shit beetle

YEAH UPDATE WE So GOOD

Last edited by Winter (2009-12-14 12:32 PM)

Should have used Army on champs...